The musical execution is inspired, sophisticated, and well-structured. Following several debut performances, it has now become perfectly clear that the appointment of Péter Halász as music director of the new Hungarian State Opera was the most felicitous choice – this young conductor is an explorer and a striking and authentic musician; after the premiere of Richard Strauss’s immensely difficult Die Frau ohne Schatten, hopes should be justifiably high for the success of Mozart’s similarly challenging work.
Under Halász, the orchestral sound of Così is neat, balanced, and plastic; the dramatic and comedic accents – the dramma and giocoso – being in proportion and finely-tuned, blend into each other; the tempos, to adopt a tone bordering on pathos, sensitively follow the natural rhythms of breathing and of the heartbeat. Péter Halász has a full command of the wealth and complexity of Mozart’s insight into human nature and of its elevated yet painful beauty that raises us to the heights of harmony, which is achieved at the cost of great struggles and is sometimes only fleeting. More than mere musical-vocal goals are envisioned, the conductor inspires himself, the performers, and naturally the audience to find (or at least seek) solutions to life’s problems.